VentureBeat

When investing, it helps to have people on your side. Usually that means other business people, and sometimes regulators, but billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is taking the sentiment to a new level with a just-announced public campaign aimed at bolstering domestic power sources.

The multi-million dollar media and advertising thrust by Pickens will attempt to swing common opinion away from foreign oil, and toward alternate energy investments –- which includes wind power, as well as natural gas for transportation.

Pickens, who made his fortune in oil and private equity, is the man behind plans for the world’s biggest wind farm, a risky play sizable enough to significantly multiply or divide even his ample assets. For a big win, he needs the support of the government to help build supporting infrastructure –- hence the big move.

The idea is intriguing, because although the root of Pickens’ fortune is in oil, he’s throwing his weight behind renewables. And he’s doing it during an election year. While John McCain spends most of his time talking about nuclear energy, which Pickens says will take “too long”, and offshore drilling, Barack Obama vocally supports all cleantech (including biofuels, which the World Bank appears ready to blame for sharp increases in the cost of food).

Though Pickens clearly has the most interest in wind, his rhetoric is centered around weaning the country off oil, which will take solar, biofuels and many other initiatives – making a clear match of his message with Obama’s.

It should be interesting to see how the energy debate plays out. Pickens isn’t the only one talking up clean energy. Al Gore’s $300 million awareness campaign about global warming just got underway, and the rest of the world is spending more time talking about the issues every day. The claim is that the ad campaigns are bipartisan, but in the current race, they seem to favor the more progressive Democrats — whereas Pickens himself has delighted in bedeviling Dems, including former presidential candidate John Kerry.

Cleantech as an investment sector is still picking up speed – the Cleantech Group this morning reported another record quarter, with $1.5 billion invested in green technologies in the United States alone. If Gore, Pickens and others get their way, there will be another flood of investment at all levels. The only question is, how high can the tide go?

Here’s the latest action:

Facebook suspends RockYou’s Super Wall – The social networking site has turned off the Facebook application’s viral aspects, like invitations and notifications, presumably as part of its efforts to crack down on spammy app activity. RockYou chief executive Lance Tokuda says he’s working with Facebook to get the suspended features restored soon. The move follows the shutdown of RockYou competitor Slide’s Top Friends application at the end of June due to a security issue. (Top Friends is back up now.)

Vinod Khosla joins Obama — The famed venture capitalist spread his bets during the primary season, giving the maximum amount to Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama. But now he has taken sides, in a way, by joining Obama’s India Policy team. The alliance makes even more sense because Khosla has been a big booster of biofuels like ethanol, and the Obama campaign is closely linked to ethanol, at least financially.

VeriSign brings back Jim Bidzos as interim chief executive –  Bidzos, who was the company’s founder and first chief executive back in 1995, is replacing William A. Roper, who resigned early last week. VeriSign manages the .com and .net domains, and Roper had been working to pare the company back down to its core focus. As for why Roper left, Bidzos says, “I don’t think it was fair to have him around while we were looking for a replacement, so he chose to leave.”

Leapfrog launches its web-based portable gaming system — With the Didj, educational gaming company Leapfrog is targeting 6- to 10-year-olds, the demographic that has embraced the Nintendo DS game system.

Vodafone buys a controlling stake in Ghana Telecom — Vodafone is buying a 70 percent stake from the local government for $900 million. The mobile network company says Ghana is one of the most attractive markets in Africa, because of its young population and low mobile penetration.

Privacy advocates like Google’s new privacy link — Google’s privacy policy hasn’t changed, but the search giant is linking to it from its main page. A number of privacy groups praised Google’s decision, albeit rather faintly. For example, Pam Dixon of the World Privacy Forum called privacy policies an “important tool” and noted that displaying such policies is standard practice among most Web sites. In other words, everyone’s glad Google made the move, but the company probably shouldn’t spend too much time patting itself on the back.

Study shows airports are a prime hunting ground for laptop thieves — Apparently, more than 10,000 laptops are reported lost each week at the United States’ 36 largest airports, and 65 percent of those are not reclaimed. In fact, VentureBeat’s own Eric Eldon had his laptop stolen at SFO earlier this year.

Sequoia Capital makes three more hires — The additions include Warren Hogarth, who will focus on cleantech; Christopher Lyle, who will focus on public market investments; and Michael Dixon, who will focus on systems and software investments. Meanwhile, David Su, one of the founding partners of Kleiner Perkins‘ China Fund, has left the venture firm for reasons unknown.

PlyMedia raises $6 million for video layers — The company, which adds interactive layers such as speech bubbles to online video, has raised $6 million from Greylock and Elron Electronic Industries, according to TechCrunch’s sources. Other interesting companies in this space include ad company Veeple and commenting company Omnisio.

Lifestream.fm relaunches with new features and German support — The lifestreaming site was acquired by the social bookmarking company Mister Wong back in April, and now it’s relaunching in invite-only mode with new support for comments, filtering, more comprehensive searches and German.

Obama takes flack for telecom reversal — Barack Obama is about as smart as politicians get when it comes to technology, and even plans to name a chief technologist for the country if elected. But he has finally managed to offend the devoted, by changing his opinion on telecom immunity for Bush-era wiretapping and endorsing a bill that would expand the government’s power for domestic spying and protect telecommunication companies that assisted the Bush Administration. Some 7,000 of Obama’s followers have converged on his website to protest, according to the NYT.

AOL possibly up for sale — Sources within AOL say that Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes is giving off the impression AOL is on the auction block, according to Silicon Alley Insider. Other sources disagree. Our take: Bewkes was elected CEO this year to clean house at Time Warner, and AOL has historically been a huge mess. If a good offer comes up, look for AOL to switch owners.

Thin-film solar to surge ahead by 2012 — The various forms of thin-film solar cells will take 28 percent of the market and reach $19.7 billion in sales by 2012, up from less than 10 percent of the market now, according to a report from Lux Research. Solar concentrator systems, by contrasted, are expected to “disappoint” for the immediate future, and organic and Grätzel photovoltaics will take longer than five years to mature at all.

Monster.com founder won’t even let newspapers have death — Before Craigslist, the first thing we all thought of for jobs was Monster.com. And before Monster, it was newspapers. In fact, Monster is often blamed for starting the landslide of listings away from newspapers, hastening their demise. Not content to let his old foes rest, Monster founder Jeff Taylor has started Tributes.com to add obituaries, one of the last revenue monopolies for newspapers, to the world of Web 2.0.

Publishers and analytics on the mobile web – That’s the subject for a free evening event, Mobile Monday, held at the San Francisco Microsoft campus next week, with companies in attendance including Admob and Opera, and a panel moderated by our own Matt Marshall. Keep in mind that our own MobileBeat2008 conference is coming up on July 24th.

McAfee returns results of S.P.A.M experiment — Ever wonder what would happen if you answered all your spam emails? Just to find out (and get some press), anti-virus software maker McAfee launched the Spammed Persistently All Month, or S.P.A.M., project with 50 volunteers. In a single month, the five US participants got 23,333 messages, not including junk mail arriving at their homes, leaving one, a realtor and housewife, “horrified”.

EBay fines $63.2M by French courts — In a decision only a capitalist-unfriendly European could come to, a French court has ordered eBay to pay several luxury brands $63.2 million for sales of fake goods by some users. But perhaps they were right to — any fool could tell from the stitching on that Louis Vuitton bag that it’s a fake.

Tesla supplying Mercedes-Benz with batteries — The electric car manufacturer will have an extra revenue stream from battery sales to Mercedes-Benz, according to Leftlane (via TechCrunch).

It’s well-understood that the Internet can make a big difference in political contests for things like raising money from small donors or gaining friends on social networks. But the web is equally great for spreading rumors, including false rumors.

Today, to try to stop at least the false ones, U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign has launched a new site called Fight the Smears. On it, the campaign includes source material for rumors — in this case, posts on anti-Obama blogs, broadcast news video clippings and such — along with its own refutations. It is a sort of Web 2.0 version of the letter-writing campaigns that candidates have traditionally asked their supporters to do for them.

Right now, it lets supporters send out email messages to their friends, an interface similar to the email option you see on newspaper sites’ stories. The site will also include a button that provides supporters with suggestions on how to fight back against rumors, as well as a way to alert the campaign of new rumors that start popping up (according to this article, although I don’t see these options yet).

Note from Web2.0 Land: If the Obama campaign wants to truly be web savvy, it should also include the host of social media share features seen on most tech web publications — the Digg and Redditt voting buttons, the Delicious share button, the Facebook share button, and others.

Content-wise, a quick look at the site shows the campaign is using a mixture of he-said-she-said arguments along with more substantive information to debunk what it considers smears. For example, one popular rumor is that Obama’s wife, Michelle, gave an anti-white tirade back in 2004, and that video proof will emerge in force later this election cycle when it can do the most damage to Obama’s campaign. The site includes a list of reasons why the rumor is wrong, such as: Michelle was never in the location where the video was supposedly filmed, the rumor-mongers have produced nothing near-substantive, etc. (However, the campaign has yet to debunk this information).

If you’re an Obama supporter, then you’ll probably conclude the rumored tape is a smear; if you’re not an Obama supporter you’re still maybe thinking “we’ll see.” But that’s not really the point. The point is that the Obama camp is creating an online resource for political reporters, bloggers and others to see a community-generated database of rumors and how the campaign is fighting back — it is trying to shape the debate.

Whether or not you support Obama, this is another forward-thinking move by his campaign in using the web to its advantage. Obama’s Facebook page already has nearly a million supporters, he is one of the most popular Twitter users and most importantly, his campaign grew legs due to massively successful online fundraising from millions of small donors.

Obama’s opponent, Republican nominee John McCain, has been scrambling to develop his own web-wide efforts — this type of rumor-debunking page is another item for his campaign’s to-do list.

[Disclosure: I'm leaning towards voting for Obama. The problem is I don't support his backwards trade policies.]

John McCain emphasized the role of the private sector and called for a cap-and-trade system in a prepared speech he delivered today in Oregon, indicating that his policies will differ greatly from those of the Bush Administration, if he is elected.

McCain praised wind, solar and other renewable energy technologies as affordable and attractive alternatives to fossil fuels that could help revamp the country’s failed energy policies and significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

In an effort to sway moderate and independent voters, McCain stressed his environmental bona fides and sought to distance himself from the Bush administration’s record — calling for a return to 1990 emissions levels by 2020 and for a 60% cut below 1990 levels by 2050.

Citing the success of the sulphur emissions trading program, instituted under the Clean Air Act, in reducing acid rain, McCain said a cap-and-trade system would have an “equally dramatic and permanent effect on carbon emissions by setting clear limits on emissions levels, while giving companies a financial incentive to reduce them.

Such a system would have the added benefit of fostering innovation and entrepreneurship among companies looking to make a profit from the sale of their permits, McCain said. “It is very hard to picture venture capitalists, corporate planners, small businesses and environmentalists all working to the same good purchase. But such cooperation is actually possible in the case of climate change,” he added.

Over time, the government would sell an increasing fraction of permits through an auctioning system to maximize federal revenues. Some of these proceeds would be used to fund advanced carbon capture systems and renewable energy projects, as well as promote the development of promising new technologies like hydrogen-powered vehicles. The rest would be invested in the country’s creaking electrical infrastructure, or used to bring clean energy to the states that need them.

A working cap-and-trade system would also help bring China, India and other developing nations to the table by demonstrating the U.S.’s firm commitment to emissions reduction. The U.S. will need to lead by example by fulfilling its obligations under a future successor to the Kyoto Protocol and by pushing for closer technological and political cooperation. While he stressed the importance of speaking to different nations’ interests, he called any comprehensive plan that did not include China and India a failure.

A McCain administration would use the government’s full purchasing power to encourage greater demand and adoption of the “best technologies and practices in energy conservation” and lean on Congress to eliminate some of the energy bill’s subsidies and tax breaks — even those for clean energy. When interviewed by Grist last October, he said he was opposed to subsidies for wind and solar technologies.

The Arizona senator is a strong advocate of nuclear energy, however, and has hinged his support for the Lieberman-Warner climate bill in part on a provision granting nuclear operators more perks. In fact, McCain has made nuclear energy a central component of his climate agenda, arguing that the U.S. — which currently has 104 reactors in operation — should ramp up the construction of new reactors.

He mentioned the progress made by France and Belgium, which derive over half their electricity from nuclear energy, in reducing their emissions. Under a cap-and-trade system, he said, the costs of building new plants would be much lower. Further research and technological innovation would help overcome nuclear energy’s main drawback — the storage and disposal of waste.

We won’t know for sure what a renewable energy infrastructure could look like under a McCain administration until early June, when he will deliver a speech dedicated solely to his energy policy. At that time, he will lay out some more specifics on his government’s approach to fossil fuels, nuclear energy and renewables. Given his strong backing for the nuclear sector, however, it’s likely that we would see a lot more nuclear reactors popping up around the country under his presidency. His stated opposition to subsidies and tax breaks casts some doubt on the continuation of government tax credits, which could crimp growth prospects for the renewable sector.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the latest action:

Barack Obama gets big Silicon Valley names behind him — Obama has picked up checks from Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz, Google backer Ram Shriram, YouTube founder Chad Hurley and many more, making him an early valley favorite, at least among the area’s power players. Thanks to Eric Savitz, of Barrons, who has sifted through Federal Election Committee filings.

MySpace.com launches Mexico site — It is here.

TomTom, the Dutch maker of navigation devices, plans to buy Tele Atlas, its supplier of digital road maps, for $2.77 billion — WSJ has details.

Big search engines dash to ensure more data privacy — It’s no coincidence they’re all moving at the same time. Google’s privacy practices are under scrutiny by regulators assessing Google’s planned purchase of DoubleClick, so the others are scrambling to win points. At least on the surface, Google is dusted by the latest moves from Microsoft, Yahoo and Ask. Yahoo, for example, rolls out a policy to make all of a user’s search data anonymous within 13 months of receiving it, compared to Google’s 18 months. Ask, in particular, wins privacy kudos. Its Ask Eraser program lets you delete your history entirely. See Microsoft’s press release.

Google News’ strange story of the President having his “Butt”checked out — Google may want to reconsider the sources it is selecting from.

Europe’s odd search-engine technology subsidies — The European Union authorized Germany to give $165 million for research on European search-engine technology projects in an effort to challenge Google. We say odd, because subsidies to produce these sorts of technologies, already developed by private companies, is a waste of tax dollars. The French and Germans have already squabbled about the direction to take the European Theseus/Quaero search project. This latest money will go to Siemens, SAP, Deutsche Thomson and EMPOLIS, owned by Bertelsmann AG. Later, it will go to smaller businesses. (Details)

SocialText, the wiki company, looking for a new CEO — Ross Mayfield, founder of the Palo Alto, Calif. company, writes a post on his blog saying the company is looking to “take it to the next level.”

SimplyHired’s questionable relationship with WhenU — The job search engine SimplyHired is rumored to have bought “pop-under” advertisements WhenU that artificially boost its traffic, according to Techcrunch. We contacted SimplyHired chief executive Dion Lim for comment. Interestingly, he did not deny it: “Our traffic has actually been growing from a variety of sources (user experience improvements, Job-a-matic, SEO, SEM, major partners),” he responded in an email. “Also, our online marketing team is always exploring different options but can’t dive deeper into it since we don’t want to tip our hand for obvious reasons. It’s certainly in Simply Hired’s best interest, however, to preserve user experience…” The practice also raises questions about the traffic measuring technology of Compete, Alexa and other tracking services that appear to count WhenU-produced traffic. ComScore doesn’t, one more reason you’re seeing VentureBeat increasingly relying on Comscore data.

Ron Conway, Google’s angel investor, backs Event Robot — The company provides social networks for large businesses. EventRobot is a nine-person two-year-old startup that says it is profitable, and has just moved to San Francisco from Irvine, Calif. The first network is for Ozzy Osbourne’s OZFest (AlarmClock)

Bebo opening up its platform to developers? — The move would follow Facebook’s radical move to open its platform to developers to allow them to make money. Story is here. Separately, check out Dave McClure’s wild rant about Facebook being the Web equivalent of Microsoft’s Visual Basic. McClure is a valley brass-knuckled marketing type, having worked for several Silicon Valley companies to evangelize their product. This post’s emotional tone overcame annoying graphics to place it on top of Techmeme over the weekend.

Twitter is about to announce a VC round — We reported the company was raising money. Now we hear that Charles River Ventures has invested, and that the round is about done. That CRV is backing Evan Williams (owner of Obvious, which controls Twitter) shows the split between Williams and CRV over his last company, Obvious, was amicable.

The Segway film sponsored by Segway — The marketers of the movie 10 MPH sent us an email pitch about the film, calling it a story of “day to day courage” as two men, Hunter Weeks and Josh Caldwell, journey across America on their high-tech Segway scooters. They beat “incredible odds, risking everything they have, cashing in retirement and maxing out credit cards to carve out this new path in life,” the email continued. Hunter Weeks, also a director of the film, is quoted: “This film transcends the audience and its message needs to be heard.” Somehow, with Segway a sponsor, we have difficulty believing this was that selfless. More details here. [Update: The marketing firm tells us Segway became a sponsor only after the trip]

Zonbu, the energy efficient PC company — The Mercury News has the scoop on the Menlo Park, Calif. based company that is charging only $99 for a basic computer and $12.95 a month for data storage that uses 20 times less power than standard computers.